For eighteen years, he was the director of the psychiatry hospital in Melchor Romero (a locality of La Plata in Buenos Aires).

Along with Florentino Ameghino, Juan Vucetich, Almafuerte and Carlos Spegazzini, he is considered to be one of the five wise men of La Plata.

His father, Carlos Adolfo Korn, was a liberal German-Prussian doctor and soldier, who had refused to take part in the repression that followed the worker's strike in the textile sector during the Social Revolution in 1848.

One of them, Alejandro Korn Villafañe, was instrumental in the University Reform and is distinguished for his insights into Catholic doctrine and his teaching position at the modern Escuela de La Plata.

Korn acted as director of Melchor Romero Hospital until 1916, when he resigned from the title in order to devote all his time and energies to philosophy.

He resigned from the title in 1897, to express his disapproval of a series of acts of corruption in the “Banco Hipotecario”, in which several other members he knew where involved.

In that year, he left the UCR, embraced the socialist beliefs and wrote Socialismo ético (“Ethical socialism”) and Incipit Vita Nova: The new philosophy will liberate us from the nightmare of mechanic automatism, and will give us back the dignity of our conscious free personality, free and master of its own destiny…If we want a better world, we will build it… Socialism itself, beyond Marx’s well-known theorem, asks for solidarity, that is to say, a theoretical feeling.

In 1919, in a moment of social unrest, the students’ movement chose him to be responsible for the university, together with Carlos Spegazzini and Edelmiro Calvo.

His most remarkable work, La Libertad creadora (“The creative freedom”) was written as a request from the “Centro de Estudiantes”, a Buenos Aires Law Student's Association, to be published in their magazine Verbum, in order to give basis to the transforming activities in which the reformist youth was embarked upon.

The former Guatemala president Juan José Arévalo, former pupil of Korn in National University of La Plata defined him as the professor par excellence.

Deputy Silvia Augsburger claimed that Korn was the main thinker of the University Reform, in what concerns new syllabuses and modern teaching methods.

Korn practiced sport, especially fencing, and helped spread it in Argentina, when it wasn't the popular activity it is today.

In 1891, with an economic, political and social crisis started in 1890 as background, he was elected President of Gimnasia y Esgrima La Plata, a title he held until 1894.

Alejandro Korn's thinking inspired a profound renovation of Latin American philosophy, under the principles of the continental University Reform democratizing movement, in a moment when Argentina was experiencing a clash in order to exceed the “oligarchic republic”, which was based on electoral fraud and “voto cantado” (“spoken vote”), and establish a democratic system that had respect for the general will as its core.

From its notable urbanistic design to its university and its famous Natural Sciences Museum, all the way up to the city's historical theaters and its extensive students’, teachers’ and researchers’ communities, with people from several regions and countries, La Plata established itself as an educational and scientific center, often called one of the Latin American cultural beacons.

The Creative Freedom is a paper first published in 1920, by the Verbum magazine, by the Law Students Centre of the University of Buenos Aires.

Korn had a decisive role in the University Reform, as a protagonist (he was the first dean to be elected by the students), and also as a thinker of the movement.

In order to understand the dynamics of freedom, Alejandro Korn started from the comprehension of “I” and the “subject” as active entities, bestowed with their own initiative.

From this theory, Korn outlined a criticism for language when he says: A philosophy treatise, in order to be logical, should be written using verbs and not a single noun.

Kant’s third antinomy states, in a concise way, the philosophical problem par excellence: the joint affirmation of necessity and freedom.

Freedom, thus understood, as an action, transformation and taking of an ethical position by an autonoumus subject, is referred to as creative freedom by Alejandro Korn The following items hold his name: In La Plata, opposite the Natural Sciences Museum, there is a monument, called Monument to the Five Wise Men by sculptor Máximo Maldonado.